Upcoming Medieval and Renaissance Lectures in Pittsburgh

The schedule of events for spring and fall can be found on the Yahoo Calendar page, which is currently maintained by faculty members from multiple universities in the consortium.

Lecture: Timothy Hampton (Department of French and Comparative Literature, UC-Berkley), “The Useful and the Honorable: Literature, Diplomacy, and the Ethics of Mediation in the Late Renaissance” Friday, Febuary 8th at 4:30 in the Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136A, at Carnegie Mellon University.

This paper will explore a point of contact between the Renaissance political practice of diplomacy, and the emerging discourse of secular literature. Modern diplomatic practice takes shape in and around the culture of Renaissance humanism, which offers deeply idealistic accounts of how diplomacy works. By the late sixteenth century, however, diplomatic theory struggles to bring humanist moral and ethical ideals into harmony with the contingencies of practical diplomacy. One of the ways in which writers reflect on the changes in diplomacy's relationship to moral philosophy is through a consideration of whether political action is to be 'useful' (that is, politically expedient), or 'honorable' (that is, morally correct). This is a topic that occurs repeatedly in discussions of the role of the mediator in diplomatic negotiations. My paper will trace this theme through the works of several late-Renaissance writers. Particular focus will be on Torquato Tasso, the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, and Michel de Montaigne, who writes at length in his Essais about the ethics of diplomacy. I will show that both of these authors use diplomatic representation to explore the dynamics of literary representation. Thus the paper will open perspectives on how literary discourse represents the limits of political power.

Timothy Hampton is currently a Bernie Williams Professor of Comparative Literature and a Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in early modern European literature and culture, he has written extensively on the relationship between literature and politics, historiography, questions of cultural transmission and cross-cultural encounters. His books include Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Cornell University Press, 1990) and Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Cornell University Press, 2000), which won the Modern Language Association¹s Scaglione Prize for the best book in French and Francophone Studies. His latest book, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe, will be published later this year.

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Edith Balas (Art History, CMU), "The Mother Goddess in Italian Renaissance Art" Friday, Febuary 15th at 4:00 in Frick Fine Arts Building, Room 202 at the University of Pittsburgh.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and by the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Sara Lipton (Department of History, SUNY Stony Brook), “Jewish Eyes, 1140-1180” Friday, Febuary 29th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

This paper examines a range of sources dating to ca. 1140-80 (hagiographical and devotional texts, liturgical objects and images, and their accompanying inscriptions) to examine distinct changes in the representation of Jews in Christian art and thought. It argues that images often read as reflecting a heightened and increasingly "racialized" anti-Judaism are, in the first instance, a by-product of how Christians desired, feared, and used representations of God. Art and society are never discrete, however, and images created to serve internal Christian purposes eventually affected Christian perceptions of actual Jews, and influenced Christian-Jewish social and legal relations.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Francois Rigolot (Department of French and Italian, Princeton University), "Rabelais and the Renaissance Interpretation of Dreams" Monday, March 17th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Richard Strier (Department of English, University of Chicago), "Mind and World in The Winter's Tale" Thursday, March 20th at 4:30 in the Giant Eagle Auditorium, Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Carol Brown Lecture at CMU.

Lecture: Richard Strier (Department of English, University of Chicago), "Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie:  The Cultural Work of The Comedy of Errors," Friday, March 21st at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Pamela Sheingorn (Professor Emerita of History, City University of New York), "Was Jesus' Foster-Father a Martyr? Constructing the Death of Joseph the Carpenter" Thursday, March 27th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Jean Howard (Department of English, Columbia), "Beatrice's Monkey: Staging Exotica on the Early Modern Stage" Monday, April 14th at Washinton & Jefferson on a topic from her most recent book, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642 (UPenn Press, 2006).

For more information about this talk, please contact Kevin Curran (kcurran@staff.washjeff.edu).

Lecture: Chris Braider (University of Colorado at Boulder), "The Baroque Art of the Mind: Beholding in Dutch Genre Painting." Friday, October 20 at 4:00 pm in College Hall 104 on the Duquesne University campus

Drawing especially on images by Samuel van Hoogstraten, Jan Steen, and Jan Vermeer, this talk explores what genre painters of the Dutch Golden Age made of (i.e., at once construed and constructed) the so-called "modern subject," the sovereign rational ego of both Cartesian metaphysics and northern optical science. The central focus of this exploration is the way in which, by incorporating acts of beholding in the very form of their pictures, Dutch painters dramatize the psycho-physical embodiment that, in determining how the world gets seen, exhibits the inescapably embodied nature of seeing itself. In addition to challenging the axiomatic centrality of the Cartesian model of self as disembodied mind, the example of Dutch art enables us to re-imagine not only Cartesian rationality, but the broader culture of the European baroque of which Descartes and Dutch genre painting turn out to be coordinate and characteristic (if puzzling) expressions.

Prof. Braider teaches seventeenth century French literature, interart problems in early modern Europe, the history of modern philosophy, and literary theory in the Departments of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently a Visiting Professor in Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the author of Refiguring the Real: Picture and Modernity in Word and Image, 1400-1700 (Princeton, 1993), Indiscernible Counterparts: The Invention of the Text in French Classical Drama (North Carolina, 2002), and Baroque Self-Invention and Historical Truth: Hercules at the Crossroads (Ashgate, 2004). Additional support received from the Department of Philosophy and the Dean of the McAnulty College & Graduate School at Duquesne University. [poster]

Peter Machamer (University of Pittsburgh, History and Philosophy of Science). Thursday, 22 September, 4pm in Cathedral of Learning 501. "Is Descartes Really a Dualist?"

Adrian Johns (University of Chicago, History). Monday, 3 October, 4:30pm in Frick Fine Arts (Oakland) 125. "Print, Medicine, and the Culture of Credit in Early Modern England."

Klaus Vogelgsang (Universität Augsburg, German Literature). Thursday, 13 October at 4 pm in Cathedral of Learning 501. "Late Medieval Passion Plays as Mass Media."

Jesse Gellrich (Louisiana State University, English and Comparative Literature). Friday, 21 October at 4pm in Frick Fine Arts (Oakland 202). "Oral Tradition and Illustrated Manuscripts from the Middle Ages."

Lecture: Rebecca Bushnell (University of Pennsylvania), "Secrets and Lies in Early Modern English Garden Books." Friday, 4 March at 4:00 pm in the H&SS Auditorium, Baker Hall A53, Carnegie Mellon University.

Rebecca Bushnell's Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens was greeted with great enthusiasm by critics last year. The book explores a thriving early modern art form and the subtle interplay of art and nature that it implied. Last year Colin Burrow wrote in the London Review of Books that Bushnell:

writes with great sympathy and quiet wit about the mixture of empiricism, magic and popular lore in [gardening] manuals, and tells the story of the way they were superseded by the apparently more scientific works on horticulture produced under the influence of Bacon and Hartlib. She shows how gardens could be places of both fantasy and discipline, in which gentry gardeners sought to exercise power over nature, and create spaces which were in their way as artful as poems.

Bushnell's talk will focus on how readers and publishers understood the purpose of gardening manuals during the period; a collection of these texts is currently available in the research library of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. After her lecture, the Hunt Institute will offer an exhibition of many of the texts treated in her talk.

Rebecca Bushnell, author of Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (Cornell, 2003), will be speaking on "Secrets and Lies in Early Modern English Garden Books." A reception and book exhibit of many of the texts discussed in the lecture will follow at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (located on the 5th floor of the Hunt Library, Carnegie Mellon). Rebecca Bushnell is Professor of English and Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice (Cornell, 1996) and Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Cornell, 1990). This event is co-sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon Department of English, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, University of Pittsburgh Department of English, University of Pittsburgh Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Two Symposia on Florence Cathedral: Saturday, 26 February (Part 1) and Saturday, March 19 (Part 2), Frick fine Arts Building 202, University of Pittsburgh.

Five distinguished scholars of medieval history from across the country will
convene at these two symposia to debate the historical implications of
excavation results from S. Maria del Fiore, the Cathedral of Florence.

The respondents on February 26 are:

• Ralph Mathisen, professor of classics at the University of Illinois and
leading American specialist in Late Antiquity;
• Thomas F. X. Noble, professor of history, director of the Medieval
Institute at Notre Dame University, and scholar on the medieval papacy.

The respondents on March 19 are:

• Thomas Head, professor of history at Hunter College and leading American
specialist in hagiography and the cult of saints;
• Patrick Geary, professor of medieval history at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and a scholar of medieval relics;
• John Howe, professor of history at Texas Tech University and a specialist
in the eleventh-century church reform, in which Florence Cathedral played a
key role.

The sessions are free and open to the public; no prior registration is
needed. More information is available by e-mailing Prof. Frank Toker (Univ. of Pittsburgh) or calling at 412-648-2419 for conference details. Professor Toker can also make available his 143-page text on historical issues raised by the excavation results, which will be the basis on which these five respondents will speak.

The two symposia are funded through the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the
University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences, and the University
Honors College.

Special Event: "Jacques Rancière: Politics and Aesthetics" a conference. March 18-19 2005, 2501 Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh.

Participants include: Jacques Rancière (professsor emeritus of aesthetics, University of Paris VIII), Kristin Ross (professor of comparative literature, NYU) , Yves Citton (professor of French literature, University of Grenoble), Bruno Bosteels (assistant professor of Spanish literature, Cornell), Peter Hallward (professor of French, King's College London), Todd May (professor of philosophy, Clemson University), Deborah Blocker (assistant professor of French, University of Pittsburgh), James Swenson (associate professor of French, Rutgers University) , Andrew Parker (professor of English, Amherst College), Solange Guénoun (professor of French, University of Connecticut), Eric Méchoulan (professor of French literature, University of Montreal), Ronald Judy (professor of English, University of Pittsburgh), Gabriel Rockhill (Philosophy, Emory University) and Raji Vallury (assistant professor of French, Kenyon College).

Please e-mail Déborah Blocker for conference details.

Lecture: Niklaus Largier (University of California, Berkeley), "Theaters of Arousal: Medieval and Early Modern Ascetic Practices and the Invention of Pornography." Thursday, 31 March at 4:00 pm at the Berger Gallery, McAnulty College Hall 207, Duquesne University.

In this talk, Professor Largier will discuss the theatrical aspects of medieval and early modern cultures of arousal, focusing on the practice of flagellation, its implications for the history of imagination and emotions, and the origin of early modern pornography from Aretino's Dialogues to Thérèse philosophe. The lecture is related to Largier’s most recent book, Lob der Peitsche. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung or Praise the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (C.H. Beck, ZONE Books translation forthcoming), which explores the relation among bodily ascetic practices, eroticism, and literary imagination in the Middle Ages and early modernity.

Parking validation is available for the Forbes Ave. University Parking Garage.
Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Duquesne University Department of Philosophy, and the Duquesne University McAnulty College of Liberal Arts and Sciences NEH Endowment Fund.

Lecture: Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt (New York University), “Person and Persona in Renaissance Portraits: Some Alternative Approaches.” Friday, 19 November at 4:00 pm in Frick Fine Arts Bldg 202.

A student of Italian Renaissance art and architecture, Professor Brandt's
publications include books on Leonardo da Vinci, sixteenth-century
sculpture, and Renaissance palaces. As permanent consultant for Renaissance
art to the Vatican Museums, Professor Brandt was a member of the Vatican
team for the cleaning, conservation, and study of Michelangelo's frescoes in
the Sistine Chapel and which now begins work on the Pauline Chapel.

There will be a reception immediately following Professor Brandt’s lecture.
 
This event has been co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh History of Art and Architecture Department and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Elliot Wolfson (New York University), “Othering the Other: Polemic Images of Christianity and Islam in Medieval Kabbalah.”
Tuesday, November 2nd, 4 pm in William Pitt Union, University of Pittsburgh, Dining Room A

Elliot Wolfson is the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew Studies at NYU. He is an expert in Jewish mysticism and philosophy and publishes widely on gender construction and the history of religion.  His numerous books include Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, 1994), which won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Historical Studies.
 
This talk has been organized by the University of Pittsburgh departments of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies.

Lecture: Rosamond Wolff Purcell
Friday, October 29th, 4 pm, Adamson Wing 136a Baker Hall (first floor, down the hall from Hunt Library entrance), Carnegie Mellon

Rosamond Purcell, distinguished photographer, artist, collector and author, will be lecturing on her most recent project, the "Two Rooms" installation at Harvard -- apainstaking recreation of the Danish naturalist Olaus Worm's curiosity cabinet (1657) with a contemporary "collection" curated by the artist. Purcell has collaborated with Stephen Jay Gould on a book about collecting and collectors entitled Finders Keepers, is the author of Special Cases — a study of monsters and marvels in early modernity — and most recently, Owl's Head, a series of essays on her relationship with William Buckminster and his prolific collection of junk in Maine.

Purcell will be discussing her recent extension of the "Two Rooms" project, whichinvolves reproducing various seventeenth century display techniques and objects. The lecture should be of interest to anyone interested in the history of museums and collecting, Renaissance art and aesthetics, and contemporary art and photography. It is co-sponsored by the Silver Eye Gallery in Pittsburgh and the Center for the Arts and Society, Carnegie Mellon University.

Lecture: William Kennedy (Cornell University), "Petrarch and Ronsard as ‘Economic Men’: Interest and Growth in the Rime sparse and the Futures of Later Petrarchism"
Friday, October 22nd, 4 pm, Cathedral of Learning 501

William J. Kennedy teaches the history of European literature and literary criticism from antiquity to the early modern period. His interests focus on Italian, French, English, and German texts from Dante to Milton. His Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (University Press of New England, 1983), recipient of the MLA's Marraro Prize, traces the rise of modern pastoral from ancient models. His Authorizing Petrarch (Cornell University Press, 1994) explores the canonizing imitations of that poet's work throughout Europe. His most recent book is The Site of Petrarchism: Early Modern National Sentiment in Italy, France, and England (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). This event has been co-sponsored by Pitt’s Center for West European Studies and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Eve Sussman
Friday, October 15, 4 pm, Adamson Wing 136a Baker Hall (first floor, downthe hall from Hunt Library entrance), Carnegie Mellon

Eve Sussman's work recieved wide acclaim this year at the Whitney Biennial where she exhibited her piece, "89 Seconds at Alcazar," a high-definition video recreation of the scene surrounding the painting of Velasquez's "Las Meninas." Of the piece, Mark Stevens writes in New York Magazine:

For those who love painting, the most memorable work in the show will probably not be a painting but Eve Sussman’s "89 Seconds at Alcazar," an astonishing video that shows Velázquez painting Las Meninas. As the master paints, we see the king and queen, the dwarf, the little prince, the burly dog, and the servants wandering about the room. Sometimes, they are talking, but what we hear is like the murmur of voices from another room. The work is uncanny. The characters have stepped out of art into art, our art.

Eve Sussman is the first speaker in this year's special pairing of lectures on "Renaissance Visuals." A snapshot from the twelve minute video installation can be viewed at the HD Cinema Site. This event is co-sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon Department of Art.

Last spring was the first semester in which the PCMRS promoted or sponsored local events of interest to the medieval and renaissance studies community. Some of these events included:

Lecture: Déborah Blocker, "Mapping Out Discourses on Poetry and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800"
Friday, January 30, 2004

Déborah Blocker is Assistant Professor of French, Department of French and Italian, University of Pittsburgh. In her lecture she will discuss a number of discourses which emerged in Europe between 1500 and 1800 to characterize and evaluate the works produced in the sphere of the arts and letters.

Lecture: Katharine Eisaman Maus, "Idol and Gift in Jonson's Volpone"
Friday, February 27, 2004

Katharine Eisaman Maus is James Branch Cabell Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is author of Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance and co-editor of the Norton Shakespeare.

International Milton Congress
Thursday-Saturday, March 11-13, 2004, Duquesne Union

The International Milton Congress, whose theme is "Milton In Context," will be meeting at Duquesne University this March. Logistical and program information can be found at http://www.miltoncongress.onlyhere.net. Plenary speakers include Stanley Fish, Michael Lieb, David Loewenstein, and Annabel Patterson.

PCMRS Inaugural Lecture: Roger Chartier
Friday, March 19, 2004: "Don Quixote in the Printshop"

Don McKenzie has characterized the sociology of texts as “the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including their production and reception.” Following Don Quixote into the printshop, this lecture will explore how a number of fictional works in the early modern period appropriated such processes and referred to the techniques and individuals involved in the production and reception of “texts as recorded forms.”

Roger Chartier is the Directeur d’études, École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales, Paris, and currently the Annenberg Visiting Professor of
History, University of Pennsylvania. A widely admired cultural historian, he
has made invaluable contributions to the overlapping fields of the history
of the book and the history of reading and print culture, as well as many
areas of early modern literature and historiography.

Gautier de Coincy Conference Program
March 20-21, 202 Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Saturday 20 March

9h  Welcome and Introduction, Alison Stones (University of Pittsburgh) and Kathy Krause (University of Missouri, Kansas City)

9h 10 Ð 10h30: Les Miracles dans les Manuscrits
Moderator: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
       Karen Duys: Book Design and the Figure of the Author
       Olivier Collet: La tradition manuscrite des Miracles et le genre de lÕoeuvre

10h45 Ð 12h15: Miracle et Religion
Moderator: Kathy Krause
       Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski: Gautier and the Typologie of Childbirth Miracles
       Laurel Broughton: Incarnational Piety in Gautier's Miracles of the Virgin
       Yasmina Foehr-Janssens: Histoire poétique du péché: de quelques figures littéraires de la faute dans les Miracle

1h45-3h15: Femmes et Images
Moderator: Bruce Venarde
       Nancy Black: Images of the Virgin Mary in the Soissons Manuscript (B.N. n. a. fr. 24541)
       Kathy Krause: Imagining Women in the Miracles
       Adrian Tudor: Telling the Same Tale? The Miracles de Nostre Dame and the Vie des Pères

3h30-4h30: Gautier et les mots
Moderator: Barbara Sargent-Baur
       Pierre Kunstmann: L'annominatio chez Gautier: vocabulaire et syntaxe
       Robert Clark: Gautier's Wordplay as Devotional Ecstasy

Sunday 21 March

9h15-11h: Gautier et les autres
Moderator: Mary Lewis
       Alison Stones: The Artistic Context of Some Miracles Manuscripts
       Frédéric Billiet: L'adaptation musicale dans l'oeuvre de Gautier de Coincy
       Brian J. Levy: Or escoutez une merveille!' Parallel Paths: Gautier's Miracles and the Fabliaux

11h15-12h15: Table Ronde
Discussion by all participants, led by Ardis Butterfield

These events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Alison Stones (mastones@hotmail.com or 412 648 2420).

Lecture: Natasha Korda, “A Cry of Players”
Friday, March 26, 2004, Cathedral of Learning

Natasha Korda is Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University. She
is author of Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies: Gender and Property in Early
Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002) and co-editor with
Jonathan Gil Harris of Staged Properties in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge
University Press, 2002). Her paper looks at the representation of itinerant women street vendors and their "cries" in plays, prints, ballads, and court music, and their place in the informal economy of early modern London. The paper is framed by a
discussion of Hamlet's advice to the players, and the rhetorical function of
"cries" in that play (hence its title).